This pattern continues throughout Cecil's White House career. He brings coffee to JFK, just as the president is sitting in front of the TV, watching black protesters getting manhandled by the police in the South. A year later, he can't walk into the room without LBJ talking about the civil rights bill. A few years after that, Richard Nixon is in office, fretting with Bob Haldeman over the Black Panthers. And so it goes, all the way up to Ronald Reagan, who has a lot on his plate, and yet somehow always happens to be talking about apartheid and South Africa whenever Cecil walks in.

"The Butler" is a nice idea for a movie, but has a mostly silly script and some of the craziest and most laughable casting imaginable. But the movie's main challenge is a simple one: It is very difficult, next to impossible, to build a movie around an inert, inactive character. Cecil is a passive man with no power - not even the power to influence or teach by example. He just stands there and watches, and there are only so many ways even a great actor like Forest Whitaker can make bewildered or stricken silence interesting.

The film is based on the life of Eugene Allen, an African American man from the Deep South who worked in the White House from the last year of the Truman administration until Ronald Reagan's second term. The screenplay, written by Danny Strong, cuts out Truman and changes Allen's name in order to turn his story into one about race relations in America, from midcentury through the election of Barack Obama.

To that end, Strong gives the butler a son who is, at first, a Freedom Rider, then an aide to Dr. Martin Luther King, then a Black Panther, then a congressional candidate and then an antiapartheid activist. Whatever is going on, the son is involved, and so, whether at home or on the job, Cecil can't get away from the story of his people.

Here's the irony: A simple, honest telling of Allen's life would have had plenty to say about race and history, just as a matter of course; and it might have been the story of a man, too. As it stands, "Lee Daniels' The Butler" is "Zelig" or "Forrest Gump" without the laughs - at least without the intentional laughs.

Three things keep the movie outside the range of terrible. The first is that the history is interesting, even when rendered in a ham-fisted and schematic way. The second is that Lee Daniels, whose finesse abandons him in the White House scenes, is very good in the ones depicting Cecil's home life. The camera work is fluid, the pace lively, the interaction complex, and the characters vivid.

The movie's third strength is in the way it uses the state dinner that Cecil attended in 1986. In real life, Nancy Reagan invited Allen to the dinner when he told her he was retiring. The movie changes it and makes Allen want to retire after he attends the state dinner, because something about crossing to the other side makes him not content to be a servant anymore. It's an arresting psychological detail and the movie's best embellishment.

Incidentally, it's rather amazing that it was Jane Fonda's casting as Nancy Reagan that generated the most negative prerelease comment, when Fonda, it turns out, nails the role, while everyone else who plays a historical figure looks ridiculous. Robin Williams as Eisenhower? Actually, with white hair he looks a little like Harry Truman, but not Ike. James Marsden as JFK? Do you believe for a minute that guy was on a PT boat and saw action in the Pacific? And what was he assassinated for, bad acting?

But wait, there's more. Liev Schreiber as Lyndon Johnson? He's game, but there's not much of a Texas vibe there. John Cusack as Nixon? He just mumbles and acts as if he's crazy. But worst of all, is there anyone less like the smiling, ebullient Ronald Reagan than the dark, depressed, deep-revolving Alan Rickman? Actually, with the black wig, Rickman looks pretty close to the original, but like Reagan with bad indigestion. Also, Rickman sounds nothing like him, which is odd. After all, virtually everyone over a certain age can do a passable impression of Ronald Reagan - you just shrug, smile, say, "Well" and nod in a genial way. But no, they hired the one guy who couldn't manage it.

To say that all this bad casting is distracting is hardly enough. Every election brings another waxwork into the picture and another round of laughs. It's awful, and yet it's probably 80 percent of what fun there is here.

Speaking of distracting, Oprah Winfrey plays Cecil's wife, and she's quite a nice actress. At the same time, it's hard to ever forget you're looking at Oprah. There's a certain point at which fame gets in the way, though the novelty might fade if Oprah made more movies.

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